Faeries & Elementals for Beginners: Learn About & Communicate With Nature Spirits (2 page)

What are Faeries?

In popular culture, faeries take on the pretty familiar form of small, winged creatures. Indeed, many cultures have ver-1

2 • Introduction

sions of faeries that fit the familiar profile. However, “faerie”

(or “faerie”) is an umbrella term that covers many mytho-

logical creatures that can range from beautiful sea beasts to nightmarish monsters that stomp through the night.

Faeries are the way that people have understood some

of the more magical and mysterious forces of life and

nature, from the birth of a particularly beautiful child as a faerie blessing, to a terrible crop yield as a faerie curse.

Faeries are the faces we put on real phenomenon so we

can propitiate them, ward them away, or even bargain with

them.

What are Elementals?

If you were to gather all the faerie creatures that have ever been imagined across time and cultures, they would all

fit into one or more of only four categories: of earth, air, fire, and water. Elementals are beings made up of energy.

Of course, they are not composed of the energy we speak

about in scientific terms, like electricity, but spiritual energy. Spiritual energy, or
chi
, is the life force within all things, and the potential used in magic to manifest one’s

desires. In the case of elementals, their energy can be used to manifest their desires and your own. The trick is to make sure that you and the elementals share the same goals.

For the purposes of predicting the behavior and needs

of elementals, they have been classified by their nature into the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water. Although this would imply that there are only four species of elementals, some cultures label any spiritual entity that watches over
Introduction • 3

any of those domains as an elemental. For example, a deva

might be considered an elemental since it loves the earth.

In the context of this book, I will instead choose to lump most natural spiritual entities into the “faeries” category so that you can read about them earlier in the book. The term

“elementals” will focus on gnomes, sylphs, salamanders,

and undines.

Significance of the elements

an how elementals came to be

Long before the chemical elements were organized into

a periodic table, people were trying to classify things on earth. For alchemists—primitive chemists and philosopher

magicians that they were—the four elements of earth, air,

fire, and water were assumed to be the building blocks for all of creation. Aristotle became one of the first to describe the behavior of elementals, in that they belonged to their respective dominions and naturally were attracted back

to their sphere of influence if left alone. Therefore, it takes effort and sometimes even force to make an elemental do

something it is not already doing by virtue of its own state of being.

With a little thought, everything could be fit into ele-

mental components. For example, a human is made up

of all of four alchemical elements. We breathe air in and

out of our bodies. Our blood, saliva, and other fluids are attributed to water. The solid body itself is made up of the element of earth, and the heat that comes from our metab-olism is from an inner source of the element of fire.

4 • Introduction

Though the periodic table of the elements does not

include any of these four elements, since they are outdated for the uses of modern science, ceremonial magicians have

continued an unbroken tradition of using the four ele-

ments in magic as well as for important ritual structure that is fundamental to the understanding Western magic’s concepts. Many Western forms of witchcraft borrowed heavily

from established ceremonial magic traditions, and these

included the use of elements.

Not only did ceremonial magicians develop a ritual

structure that used the four elements as building blocks

in the architecture of magical structures called circles, but they also used a mode of communication with magical

entities that was quite forceful and authoritative, calling on elementals to do their bidding and establishing one of the first ways that people could work directly with elementals by taking them out of their element, so to speak.

Elementals in a religious context

While ceremonial magicians and many other historical

practitioners of magic did not use elementals in the con-

text of worship, elementals have found their place in many world religions and in modern witchcraft’s spiritual component. As soon as elementals became more than just a

magical hypothesis, they began to become inextricably

bound to nature. Ceremonialist use of elementals remains

largely relegated to symbolism within ritual constructs. Yet, people from various faith traditions, including Buddhism,

Neopaganism, in addition to practitioners of traditional

Introduction • 5

medicines commune with elementals outdoors among the

woods, streams, oceans, lakes, and the furious weather of

the natural world.

What should be your focus and how

can you incorporate them into your life?

Although elementals find their way into practical use in

many religious and healing arts, they are largely theoretical in nature. Understanding elementals is to philosophize about all of existence and how it fits into various categories of understanding. If you are a deep thinker, and enjoy the philosophy and theology, the four traditional elementals

may be the right focus for you. By using elementals, you

can analyze your life critically using the elementals as a tool to rebalance and to seek blessings.

If, however, you find that elementals feel too imper-

sonal, and you don’t want to devote your entire life to their study, you would do best to focus on faeries. These beings are the fun and intriguing faces of elementals that can bring them more easily into everyday life. By incorporating faeries into your daily routine, you can add a little magic and perhaps get a little closer to nature in the process. Faeries let you dip your toe into understanding elementals, and can help the beginner to get started figuring out what you truly believe.

6 • Introduction

Why work with elementals and

other mythological creatures?

Why should anyone choose to invoke mysterious and pos-

sibly dangerous magical wildlife? It may seem tantamount

to inviting a rabid squirrel into your home. Whether the

idea sounds fun or daunting, it is impossible to ignore the power that the four elements have as a concept. The four

elements persist because they work to solve life’s problems, and if they work they should continue to be used.

With the use of elementals, you have additional ener-

getic and enthusiastic little friends that can help you. Not only do many hands make light work, but the focus and

drive to do what is in their true nature to do, can make elementals obsessively devoted to your goals when appropriate aims are selected for appropriate elementals.

As in ancient times, the modern world is still full of

mystery. Faeries and elementals are some models that

can still be used to explain the way things work. Enter-

taining the idea of mythological creatures can bring light and magic to everyday situations, such as losing track of

your car keys and blaming it on the pixies. And, in some

instances, the mythological explanation makes a lot more

sense than any rational one … especially if you specifically remember setting your keys down in a specific place only to find them transported to a surprisingly high shelf.

Are they “real?”

The real question that plagues the more literal-minded type of person reading this book is whether or not little people
Introduction • 7

or elementals are real. Of course, this depends on what you mean by the term “real.” Naturally, faeries and gnomes are not the same ones that you see animated on television or

depicted by lawn ornaments. Beyond that extreme, though,

the lines intersect between inspiration, imagination, fable and metaphor. Faeries and elementals have established

themselves as workable archetypes for understanding the

incomprehensible, and have rightfully earned a place in the real-world practices of rational adults.

Speaking of archetypes, I should explain how they

are different from thoughtforms. Often, archetypes feel a

little more “real” in the practical context of working with them. A thoughtform is an idea that can take the form of

an entity, like an elemental, but thoughtforms are fueled

by the energy of the person thinking about the idea. Usu-

ally, the thoughtform exists for a short time so a specific task may be performed. Once the goal is completed and the

mind stops feeding energy into the thoughtform, it dissi-

pates. Elementals can also carry out goals, and they are also representative of many ideas. In this way, elementals already exist as archetypes in the human collective subconscious,

and can be called upon as needed without ceasing to exist

when an individual’s goal has been achieved.

What you will learn, know and be able to do

Through this book, I will attempt to educate the reader a

bit on the history and mythology of elementals and faer-

ies without getting too bogged down in what other people

believe. More importantly, I will help you to personify the
8 • Introduction

concepts behind magical creatures so that they can become

practical and useful tools and companions to your magical

work.

By the end of this book, you will understand which

duties fit what elementals and faeries best, how to commu-

nicate with them and get them to help you with problems

in everyday life. You’ll get a handle on where elementals and faeries fit into your own psychology. You’ll learn how they can impact your spiritual practice by giving it a structure, philosophy and multiple ways of going about getting what

you want to happen in a world that can be chaotic and have a mind of its own, just like the entities you will come to know.

Most of all, I’d like you to meet elementals and faeries

in the common ground of your own mind, your environ-

ment, or wherever your biggest hopes and fears collide. I

want you to see helpful entities, with your mind’s eye or

otherwise, and to startle yourself with observations of an exotic wildlife of mythological proportions. Working with

elementals and faeries is something you have to see to

believe. Jump right in and get started with some steps you can take to work directly with magical entities. The results you’ll find in your own life will speak for themselves.

one

Getting started with Faeries

Jane loved playing with her kids and how the real world
and imagination were always intertwined. As an artist and writer, Jane wanted to keep inspirational traditions
woven into her family’s culture at all times. Instead of waiting
for Santa to come to town to put out milk and cookies, Sarah’s
two daughters helped put out a family offering to the faeries
in the garden every night before bedtime.

At dinner, a small plate for the faeries rested always in
the middle of the table. Before digging in to eat, each family
member placed a crumb of each food they were going to eat.

Jane’s youngest, Madison, added an extra big glass of milk to
ask the faeries to bring back her favorite doll that had gone
missing. After dinner, her eldest, Tammy, took the plate to the
center of the garden in the front yard and left it on a rock right
under the bird bath.

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10 • Chapter One

Jane smiled as she watched her children giggling and

dancing wildly around the bird bath, thanking the faeries for
flowers and kittens and everything they thought was joyous
and good. A flicker of light caught Jane’s eye. Was it a reflection of light off the water? A glowing dust mote seemed to
dance in the orange glow of the setting sun as if it had a mind
of its own. Jane sensed a feeling of well-being and happiness.

“Tammy, Maddie!” she said, “Did you see a faerie in the sunlight too?” Tammy stopped dancing and hugged her little sister, cocking her head at her mother quizzically. “Of course,
Mommy, they’re always there.”

Not all spiritual entities found in nature can be quite

simply classified as a single elemental of one of the four elements. The catchall term of “faeries” includes many other

creatures, although they may be more detailed expressions